Episode 490 - Genres of webcomics!
Aug 3, 2020
Aren't genres great? They're so useful for categorising what we like and selling our work. Today we're chatting about all the genres that are popular in webcomics now, that we know of. Back in the day webcomics were mainly defined by TWO genres: slice of life, and gaming. And out of those two gaming was king! Actually a lot of comics combined the two. The biggest were things like 8 Bit Fantasy, PVP, Penny Arcade, and Ctrl Alt Delete.
Topics and Show Notes
But things expanded pretty quickly. Now a lot of sites are specifically known for the genres that define them, like Webtoons and Tapas have a very specific “look” to the content that they like to promote and that encourages people want to join there to also work in that style. Smackjeves was known for its manga boy-love content, Furafinity was the home of furry comics etc. One of the best things about Drunk Duck is that we DON'T have a specific look to the comics on our site, we love to promote lots of different genres and styles. The idea of having a unified look is an anathema to us.
My own main genre for my Pinky TA comic is war/adventure, and that hasn't really expanded much over time. For Bottomless Waitress the genre there is Teasing sex-comedy/romance, and that again is NOT well represented in the world of webcomics. Tantz and Pit tell me that “Fairytail” is one of the big up and coming webcomics genres these days and I can definitely see that. What genre does your work best fit into and what do you think are the main webcomics genres now? Horror, romance, scifi, adventure, fantasy, western…?
The musical feature this week that Gunwallace has given us is theme to Bottomless Waitress II - Part two of the BW cannon! Revenge of the banjo! We start off with a tractor roaring into life and a banjo opening us up to the sounds of rural Midwest America- wide open corn fields, golden wheat, grain silos, quiet backroads, haystacks, big red barns, and a kinky little diner where the coffee is is bottomless and so are the staff! Ava’s diner is a welcoming place for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Buttered buns, glazed donuts, and creamy desserts are a house specialty! So swing on by. We prefer you to come in by the front door, rear entry is for staff only.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Join the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Tantz's post on genre - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/31/choosing-your-genre/
Featured comic:
Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/28/featured-comic-bottomless-waitress/
Featured music:
Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/,by Ozoneocean and Banes, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Pit Face - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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Episode 489 - Continuity
Jul 26, 2020
It's just Banes, Tantz and me today, chatting about the important topic of continuity! How do you maintain it, what continuity errors have you made, what continuity errors have you noticed in media? What's the difference between character continuity, story continuity and chronological continuity? - Something you notice when you watch or read a series in chronological order that was were NOT produced or meant to be viewed that way.
Episode 488 - DD Anthology details!
Jul 20, 2020
This week the brilliant Damehelsing (aka Agiebun), comes on to tell us the details of the DD anthology! Last week Boundbun gave us a general overview but now we're having a look at exactly HOW it's going to be done and how YOU can contribute to it. We'll have details and discussion on the DD Discord server as well as in our Twitter and on the forums. Currently there are 5 themes that we're deciding between: Urban fantasy, Noir, Community, Horror and Halloween. We'll have to decide which of those we like best to tie together the whole thing!
Episode 481 - Fun with history?
May 31, 2020
Today we're chatting about using historical stuff in your story and knowing how to use it right! Sometimes it's good to change stuff and sometimes it's not. The thing is that you should ONLY change it if you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. A good example is A Knight's Tale- It has a historical setting and there are a lot of deliberate historical anachronisms in it, and they're all very obvious, they do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
Episode 479 - Big ideas in fiction
May 18, 2020
My original idea for this Quackcast was: “Genre fiction is the best place to explore ideas, straight fiction doesn't do it as well” What I meant was that diverting from straight reality in fiction makes it easier to conceptualise, simplify and explain complicated ideas to a general audience for a whole number of reasons. There was some disagreement between Tantz and I because I expressed myself poorly so she'd thought that I was saying it was much easier to write SciFi and fantasy (Genre fiction), and it was easier to write about big ideas, while straight fiction wasn't good for that- Which is fair enough! My initial statement is so badly worded that's a valid interpretation! Fortunately Banes and Pit were on hand to smooth things out and explain things properly. Pit mediated between us and Banes conceptualised my concept FAR, far better than I did! Unfortunately you don't get much of that disagreement on the Quackcast. You DO get a bit of it on the PATREON only video however ^_^
Episode 476 - Tell me about your childhood
Apr 26, 2020
How does where you grew up influence your comicing? This idea interested me, so I posted about it on the DD forums and asked other people. I didn't really know about it myself: how did my childhood environment influence my later comicing? The conclusion I came to was that since my childhood experience was so alien to the worlds depicted in the media I enjoyed so much most of my comicing and creation was based on imagination out of necessity: Historical fantasy set in mountainous, cold, hazy Europe, vs my own experience of a new country without much history, with sunny weather, clear skies and a beachy lifestyle in Australia.
Episode 473 - Genre vs Setting
Apr 5, 2020
In this Quackcast we talk about the differences between genre and setting and what genre really is. For instance: Fantasy and SciFi aren't genres, they're settings… Mostly. It's complicated but they both pretty much USED to be genres, now they're mainly just settings for genre stories to take place in. What does that mean? Well, Fantasy wasn't even considered a genre back in the day, not really till after the success of Tolkien. Later on a lot of writers began using that same style and consumers really wanted it, so it became a “genre”. It was only later on when it graduated out of that to become a setting that has genre stories set within it.
Episode 471 - Fantasy
Mar 23, 2020
Today we're having a chat about fantasy fiction! Mainly books and the fantasy writing that inspired us and that we love! Faves like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Piers Anthony! Just to define, we're talking swords, elves, armour, dragons etc, in a “medieval” context, generally European. As a subset there's native, Arabian, Asian, Mayan etc, also high fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy and even mythology…. And then techno fantasy, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, fantasy cyberpunk and so on… but we mainly stick to the mainstream stuff and only just touch on the weird little variations for now.
